For A' That

We  won the Plockton Yacht race for the Frithard trophy in the RanDan last year. Since then Callum Matheson from Portree has exchanged the RanDan for a faster new X362 which has a lower handicap than his great rival, Stoirm Mhor skippered by the Bodach. During a five hour shortened course due to light winds, Callum won the Frithard Trophy for a second time last weekend. It was a very close race until the Stoirm Mhor opted to take a risky line between the lighthouse rock and the mainland close to the finish and ran aground on a sandbank. He started the engine and reversed off with no apparent damage. Battle will re-commence next Saturday 6th August when they go head to head along with the rest of the fleet in the Round Raasay race starting in Portree.

I was crewing again this year and had a brilliant day sailing in glorious sunshine around the Plockton and Skye shores. Last year I dropped a very nice compass overboard, this year my expensive sunglasses went swimming just after the start. Could be time to invest in some diving gear.

Photos on Flikr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/43712302@N00/sets/72157627324748138/detail/

I am liberated and unleashed by my iPad2. Can I go post PC and use it for everything? Over the next week, I’m going to try to do all the personal and work computer tasks I need to do on my iPad. Getting my exchange email working was easy, so I’m now using it for all email.

The new iWork.com (beta) is interesting. Storing and sharing files in the cloud rather than on your desktop requires a shift in thinking and behaviour, but it feels OK. The speed of connection will annoy me sometimes when I need to process a document quickly. I’ve been using Google docs for a couple of years and that is the benchmark.

Coincidentally, my good friend Paul Campbell left LTS last week, that’s a post PC I didn’t plan. He has been the keystone in the Glow team since it started and a great loss to the programme. Good luck and best wishes PC.

Last week Scotland had winners in both the European Tour and the US PGA tour on the same day. It will be interesting to see if this leads to a number of Scots believing they can compete and win at the highest level of this and other sports.
The number of players we have playing golf in this country should deliver many more world class players. So why not? Unpleasant weather? Second rate Coaching? Low self confidence?
Dr Carol Craig at the Centre for Confidence has some interesting views about the Scottish confidence. The centre’s mission statement could be a useful one for the Scottish sporting community. Is cognitive psychology a keystones to future success?
http://www.centreforconfidence.co.uk
Europeans currently hold the top four world rankings in Golf. They dominate the ATP Tennis rankings. Europe is in a golden era and Scotland should step up and take it’s fair share.

Can the people who run world football eliminate the cheating and allow us real football fans to enjoy the beautiful game? I was just watching some of the finest and richest players pull shirts and kick the ball away and claim for a corner and bad mouth the linesman and surround the referee. I can’t stand it – I want to admire these people for their fabulous talents. Humanity at its worst and best in one nylon shirt.

Sort it Joseph Sepp Blatter

I spent last weekend with Jane in London. We had a couple of hours strolling around Borough Market. A couple of years ago, we had done the same thing and I purchased some green tea. Amazingly  I remembered the name of the stand “East Teas” and the gentleman who runs it was still there.

I bought two of his best teas, Long Jing  Premium and Long Jing Supreme. I have always loved chinese tea, I think it goes back to my Hong Kong upbringing. He pointed me to a URL that gave me some background on the Master who prepares the leaves.

This is the very field that my tea came from.

Two sites worth looking at if you are into green tea.

http://www.singleestatetea.com/

http://www.afternoonteatotal.com/

This is my first post on the family website – I thought I would provide a link to the site where I load all the photos from my travels.

If you look carefully at the picture of our snowbound back garden, you will see that Rudolf has arrived early this year. We moved here in 1969 and we have never seen snow this deep in West Lothian.

On 20th November 2010, I moved my hosting to bluehost and set up andypendry.net as my publishing site. I installed WordPress on my domain using simple scripts. I transferred my domain, which added a little complexity, but support from bluehost was very good. Very pleased so far, now to plan how I want to use the site.